The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for wound assessment. The first and most basic step in wound care is an assessment and documentation of the wound to ascertain its characteristics which then allows an informed decision to be made concerning treatment. Wound characteristics which must be assessed include not only wound dimension (i.e. size and shape) measurements but also location, depth, staging, color, presence of eschar, erythema, odor, drainage, and presence of undermining.
Wound measuring devices presently available consist of variable size flexible or stiff plastic sheets employed in a ruler-like fashion to measure a wound's dimensions. The device is placed over top of the wound so that the wound's dimensional information may be measured and recorded, either by memory or scratch notes for later transcription onto a permanent document. The wound measuring device is then disposed. Disposable plastic measuring devices are inefficient because they waste time, are inaccurate, and permit valuable wound data to be discarded. They waste time because the original data must later be transferred to a permanent patient chart, with such a transference also creating inaccuracies which result from the erroneous entrance of the original data onto the permanent patient record. Additionally, any wound sketch made on the disposable plastic measuring device will be lost with the disposal of the device. Thus, a wound sketch which may be extremely useful in later wound examinations has been lost. Disposable plastic measuring devices, therefore, do not present a practical solution to the problem of wound assessment.
A second type of wound assessment device is the "Flexigrid" marketed by Smith and Nephew. That device consists of a peel away top grid placed over an Opsite dressing. Unfortunately, Opsite is not always needed, practical, or the proper dressing for a wound. In such instances, the "Flexigrid" cannot be used.
Thus, the present invention has been developed to be a non-disposable wound assessment tool usable in any and all wound situations.